


just can't get away from myself

by molotovhappyhour



Series: The Force Shall Free Me [6]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Introspection, M/M, Morally Ambiguous Jedi Order, implied former padawan/jedi relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-11 20:45:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5641297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molotovhappyhour/pseuds/molotovhappyhour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Why are you so unhappy, Jedi?" Eren doesn't know what he needs to say to get this guy to leave him alone, but "I'm in prison," doesn't seem to be cutting it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just can't get away from myself

**Author's Note:**

> no one asked for this but i wanted it and this series is nothing but self-indulgence. however i feel that it's a good idea to warn you that i promise eren doesn't stay sad forever.
> 
> this is a parallel piece that takes place during [the heart v. the eyes v. the head](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4835156).
> 
> thank u for your time everyone
> 
> for full effect, listen to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtGouaxO4TA).

(“ _why are you so unhappy, jedi?_ ”

There had been a new guard introduced to his rotation—by the name of Connie Springer—eight standard days into his incarceration as he waited for a sentencing hearing, though there had been talk of a trial. But as it stands, it’s just a rumour, and even if there was a trial, it doesn’t really matter.

But what does matter is that this guard had _always_ fucking asked the same fucking question.)

This night isn’t any different than the others—though Levi isn’t on planet, anymore, not right now. He felt it the moment that he’d left, two standard days ago. But, besides the almost-lonely feeling in his gut, this night is the same as every other one, because Eren dreams of Omwat.

It starts out like all the other dreams. The planet is full of _life_ , cool and refreshing, peppered across the barely-civilised world in freckles. It reminds him a little of Mandalore that way, but less icy, less cold. Then again, he supposes, it’s not this hemisphere’s winter on this world. Just green grasses and honeycombed villages in the distance, populated by pale, thin Omwati. The sky is _beautiful_ , but Eren thinks that about every planet he visits. Being able to see the sky will _never_ get old.

Until he remembers that he came here for a reason, and that reason drops a stone inside his stomach, setting his insides to boiling. The taste of ozone sits inside his mouth, his fingers itching with his own cacophony in the Force.

He’s never heard himself sound so loud before. But maybe that’s because he’d always been too busy listening to Levi.

(“ _why are you so unhappy, Jedi?”_

 _“why the fuck_ ,” he’d said the third time, because it was driving him up a wall. All he’d wanted to do was walk around the yard for his required exercise until he’d had to be escorted back into the cell that had become his world, “ _do you think i’m unhappy? i’m in prison!_ ”

Connie had laughed. Eren had not.)

He leaves the freighter behind him on the open sea of grass, kilometers away from anything resembling a spaceport, his lightsaber swinging from his belt, and he follows the murmurs of the Force towards where he knows the Jedi to be. Jedi burn brighter than other people, the song of the Force bursting from their veins. And they don’t feel the need to hide from him. After all, why would they?

When do sinners ever feel the need to repent for their hubris?

The grass whispers beneath his boots as he crests another hill, spying an area cleared of grass and debris, on top of which sits a model of freighter that Eren knows very personally. It’s silhouetted, almost, the sun angled on it enough that it hurts to catch the light reflected on the metal, but it is, without a doubt, a variation of the model of freighter the Republic military uses for general peacekeeping duties. Beside the freighter are one, three, _sixteen_ Republic soldiers, most of whom are lounging in the shade of the freighter.

Also within the shade of the ship are the two Jedi, burning within the Force, and around them Eren can feel, again, the freckles of life. But he can’t _see_ those things, only feel them. They taste of powdered sweetseed, innocent and small. They feel like children.

And that is, of course, because they _are_ children.

This is weird, really—standing here atop this hill like he has in countless other dreams, like he had not even two weeks before, and considering the image before him. He thinks about the stolen kisses and fleeting smiles, the soft brush of hands and the murmurs in the Force. And then he thinks of the confessions cut off prematurely, because emotions can’t be ignored once they’re said out loud. They get dangerous, after that. They grow, living things all on their own, and they slowly start to tear people to pieces with sharp teeth.

But keeping it to himself didn’t stop the monster called love from growing. It just ended up eating him alive.

Of course, it brings into perspective—atop this hill, watching the wind ripple through the grass, looking down upon the Jedi who look down on everyone else—what he’d let himself get eaten alive for. Once, before he’d known all of this, it’d been for the greater good. He’d settle for the stolen moments with Levi, settle for the wistful ache every time he looked at him, settle for meeting Levi in the Force where no one else mattered but the two of them. After all, he was giving all this up to be a _hero_ , a Jedi. No one in the undercity liked the Jedi, and that meant they were Good.

But Jedi—they aren’t heroes, nor are they Good. They’re _liars_ , criminals, _thieves_.

Maybe Eren belongs with them after all.

Because as he descends the hill—craving answers, needing someone to tell him that giving up Levi was worth _something_ —he knows that he’s not very Good either. His irises burn when he blinks, the swirl of the Force around him raising the hairs on his arms with static.

He feels the Jedi notice him.

But he doesn’t move any faster.

(He didn’t know why he’d told Connie about the day of his arrest. But he had, coughed up every word to lay beside his feet, his prison-issue sneakers scraping against the permacrete swathe of the prison yard. He talked about the suddenness of everything, the way Levi’s face had cracked at the edges, the way he’d collapsed in the Force, the way he’d said, as calmly as he could, “ _where the fuck are you taking my Jedi?_ ”

It hadn't been very calm at all.

Connie had been silent for a moment, something new on him. Even in the Force he was nothing but chatter. But then he’d said, “ _it sounds like he loves you a lot,_ ” and it felt like the ground had fallen out from beneath him.

Laughter crawled out of his throat with sharp claws, and he’d laughed so hard it had hurt to breathe, the sound of it bouncing back in an ugly echo that had sounded a lot like the breaking of glass. He’d bent over, hair hanging in his face, and his eyes had burned with tears.

“ _isn’t that a fucking shame!_ ” he’d said, swallowing the knives held inside his mouth that still tasted of his laughter. “ _i love him too!_ ”

Connie didn’t laugh with him, for once.)

The dream blurs together in a flurry of action and emotion, much as the moments had when he’d gotten within firing distance of the military. Shouting begins, pointed demands for Eren to stop where he was, blasters raised and pointed at his chest, leaving stinging places across the plane of his chest and peppered on his face.

“It’s routine,” the soldiers tell him, maybe ignorant of the Jedi’s purpose here. “And therefore well within the boundaries of Republic defense.”

“I don’t think so,” Eren tells them, with a voice that’s not his own. It’s the sound of gravel rattling inside a jar and it makes his bones ache when it brushes past his teeth. But he _cannot_ let this go.

They don’t need to go through this song and dance. All he wants is the Jedi, and he tells them so. All he has are _questions_ and all he wants are _answers_. But the Jedi do not come forward, and the militia do not back down. Instead, the Jedi speak to the militia, and the militia speak back to them, sharing information as to the nature of what a rogue Jedi might look like, if there were such a thing. In fact, within the storm of the noise inside Eren’s head, he can hear them saying something else, something important. Something that signals the beginning of the end.

“Set blasters to kill!”

Eren’s lightsaber comes into his hand as a reflex, as self-defense, as _protection_ , and it’s brought to life with a _snap-hiss_ that sounds different when his ears are so muffled with all the feelings he’s not supposed to have.

When everything starts, the children are left inside the crossfire, too many around to be held by only two Jedi. This is dangerous, Jedi aren’t supposed to do this, children are supposed to be safe and happy and _loved_ , like everyone else in this fucking galaxy except the Jedi themselves. And so Eren takes two jobs onto his shoulders—self-defense and the defense of the Omwati children, already crying for the parents they were about to be stripped from.

Everything finishes quickly after that—or it feels like it does.

There is, naturally, screaming inside and outside his body, and it’s when he’s stepping over fallen bodies, disgusted with himself and so very afraid, deep inside the pit of noise within him, that he feels Levi land on Omwat, somewhere beside the freighter that Eren had left behind.

The Jedi run the moment Eren turns away, following the sensation so familiar that it almost quiets the feeling of his heart exploding beneath his ribs, washing his physical form away in a burst of thermonuclear energy. The key word, of course, is _almost_. His body burns despite the soothing hands Levi is already trying to push over him inside the Force, despite the fact that when they meet up between the clearing—now devoid of the Republic freighter—and their own ships, Levi’s weapons are not yet raised.

This is where the dream turns from something entirely repetitive into something new and terrifying.

(“ _i hurt him,_ ” Eren had said, very quietly, finally sitting beside the persistent officer who wouldn’t shut up about his girlfriend who was an Air Traffic Controller for one of the many Coruscanti spaceports until Eren had deigned to answer his fucking question. “ _i hurt him because i was jealous of everyone else. jedi do not envy, because envy leads to greed, greed leads to fear of loss, fear of loss leads to anger, leads to hate, leads to me. and i hurt him._ ”

“ _but you love him,_ ” and Eren hopes that defense sounds as weak to Connie as it does to him.

“ _and that’s how i ended up hurting him. do you, like, not listen when i speak?_ ” He’d paused because he didn’t know what else to say and he didn’t want Connie to say anything. “ _and stop calling me jedi._ ”)

The planet falls away beneath their boots, even though this stance is exactly the same as it had been on Omwat—Levi with his two lightsabers held in a reverse-grip, Eren with his own held in front of him in a guard that can go offensive with just the twitch of his wrist. There are countless stars spread out above them, that same sky reflected in the mirror on which they stand. The galaxy glitters around them, as if the two of them are the only people that matter.

And, even now, inside this dream of his, Eren feels like they still are.

But his lightsaber feels heavy in his hand, his legs barely able to hold himself up at all this _newness_ , and Eren feels entirely out of his element, all of this too new and uncomfortable. Panic rises in his windpipe and threatens to choke him, and he’s thrust forward into something entirely too familiar and too foreign all at once.

The fight goes as it had on Omwat, Eren rushing him even as he tries to dig his heels into the ground beneath him and _stop,_ his boots almost skidding against the reflection beneath him. But the him from Omwat—the him that’s trying to claw his way out of his chest—is hoping that if he swings hard enough, if he says enough mean things, if he throws enough painful half-truths at his face, Levi will kill him, will hate him so much that he’ll stop asking Eren to come back with him. If Levi just fucking _let him go_ , this would be easier—easier to deal with, easier to feel, easier to just stop _wanting_. But he doesn’t, because maybe Levi is as stupid as Eren is.

Eren’s feet come out from under him this time and he lands on his back, going breathless, facing the stars, and Levi, the lightsaber burning at his throat. This is too much, _too much_ , why is this different from every other night—

Levi turns off his lightsaber, cutting the blue glow away from his face and bathing himself almost entirely in starlight and says, “come back.”

Eren’s body moves of its own accord, but it doesn’t move _correctly_ —and this is also too different. He reaches with the Force, pulls, _yanks_ , and Levi’s lightsaber slaps into his palm, meeting him as he flips up from his crouch in an offensive maneuver he’s never done in his _life_. It’s never fit with their combat, never fit with their teamwork, it’s never _fit—_ why is this—

The lightsaber comes down against him, cutting through robe and flesh and bone with the ease of a vibroblade through butter. Lightsabers are, as one knows, elegant weapons. There’s no mess, no resistance—just the cleanliness of the cut, from collarbone, through the ribcage and—

Someone’s screaming—

Ah—

Levi’s body collapses and all of this is _wrong_ , it’s wrong, this isn’t right, this isn’t how Omwat went, Eren would _never_ , he would never, of course he would never—

He’s on his knees and the mirror is reflecting the stars, reflecting his face, while Levi lays before him in two pieces—

The Eren in the mirror smiles and his eyes are _gold_ , the gold of vengeance, the gold of the dark, the gold of the _Sith_ , so gold—

“So,” says the Eren in the mirror, with a voice like gravel in a jar, “what’s it feel like, kiddo? To taint everything you touch? How’s it feel? How’s it taste?”

Has the screaming stopped?

No, it—

Eren brings down the pommel of the lightsaber against the mirror of the ground, shattering it into a thousand pieces, into _millions_ of pieces, into _countless trillions of_ —

He falls through the stars—

And he wakes up.

His body doesn’t feel like his. His bones are stiff and his hands won’t stop shaking when he pushes himself upright, wobbling when he stands. The shatter-proof mirror above his sink, only three steps away from the bed that feels like stone, reveals his normal face. Shadows beneath the eyes, hair stuck to the forehead—but his eyes are _green_. They’re green, like they’re supposed to be. They’re the right colour, that was just a dream, it was only...

(“ _why are you so unhappy, jedi?_ ”)

A dream.

Eren drops back onto the bed of stone, groaning softly. His mouth is dry—too dry, almost painfully dry—but he’d only just sat down again, and the energy it would take to stand is more than he could manage at the moment, he thinks. He can get water in a minute or two to wash the taste of ozone and ground up rock from between his teeth. But until then—until then—  

His spine rattles at a touch in the Force.

Levi is still not on planet, of that much Eren is sure. He would’ve felt it if he were. But this touch is Levi’s, no doubt about it. He’s winding himself inside Eren’s noxious cloud, pulling it around him as if to smother himself, and Eren thinks of his dream, of his nightmare, thinks of poison—

(“ _what’s it feel like, kiddo?_ ”)

And yet this is the one time Eren refuses to pull away. Touches like these—they’ve been common since his arrest. Levi will reach because Eren always reached back, like maybe there’s still something there that Eren hadn’t ruined when he’d stormed out of the Temple with no real goal and barely any information besides _Omwat_ in his head. Eren will try and hide himself away, because there’s only so much damage he can allow himself to do. The monster inside his heart has already hurt Levi enough.

He’s done enough.

But he lets Levi—no. Wrong.

He lets himself have this, and he promises that it’s the last time, and he tells himself that when he pushes back, when he curls up against the endless stream of Levi’s light, that it’s not like coming home. For a moment, nothing in the universe has changed for them. They’re the same, like they’ve always been, and the dream is wiped from behind his eyelids. In fact—in fact, it makes him think of the kiss on Mandalore, of the feeling of their lips pressed together, of meeting Levi’s tongue, of the taste of winter and warmth and _Levi_.

“Jedi!” But, as it often goes, it never lasts for long. And this voice isn’t a welcome one—sounds like one of the guards from his old rotation. “There’s a date set for you—a trial. In two days, you’re finally going to have to look the Republic in the face.”

Eren doesn’t know what to say to that, and so he doesn’t speak, tries instead to find the space inside him where Levi had been—reaches, reaches, _reaches_...

Levi meets him. Levi meets him like he always fucking does, and Eren’s always been weak for that.

(He lets himself live a lie for a few minutes more—after all, it’s what the Jedi do.

Might as well pretend to be a Jedi just a couple days more.

The monster in his heart will just have bones to feast on by then.)


End file.
